How to Handle a Senate Demagogue
1st April 2023
Steven Hayward at Power Line.
It is hard to single out the most egregious demagogue in the U.S. Senate, but near or at the top of my list is Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He likes to blast “dark money” even though Democrats by far receive more so-called “dark money” than conservatives or Republicans. (I’m updating my periodic Lexicon of Political Terms accordingly, to reflect that “dark money” means “donations from the private sector that supports ideas or causes the left doesn’t like.”) Whitehouse in particular likes to attack the Federalist Society as some kind of “cabal” or conspiracy to transform the federal judiciary, as if there were no issues whatsover that any decent person could possibly argue over. He never deigns to argue about anything. If it were up to Whitehouse, I suspect he’d censor or outlaw the Federalist Society. Fortunately he’s just another Senate blowhard.
Ditto for climate change. Earlier this week Whitehouse chaired a Senate committee hearing on the subject “Left Holding the Bag: The Cost of Oil Dependence in a Low-Carbon World.” It was a set up to denounced fossil fuels, of course, with the witness lineup tilted three to two in favor of the climatista party line. The primary dissenting Republican witness was our pal Ben Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute, who has actually appeared here on Power Line under the pseudonym “Comrade Molotov.” (And now you know. . .)